HALIFAX — Some key findings from a preliminary report by the Transportation Safety Board into the crash in March of an Air Canada jet that hit the ground 200 metres short of a runway at Halifax Stanfield International Airport:

— The Airbus 320-200 was correctly configured for landing and its air speed was consistent with a normal approach.

— No mechanical deficiencies were found with its engines, flight controls, landing gear and navigation systems.

— A review of the aircraft’s maintenance records found no discrepancies.

— At the time of the early-morning crash on March 29, the wind was gusting at 48 kilometres per hour, forward visibility was 1,600 metres amid drifting snow and vertical visibility was 91 metres.

— The board has yet to look into pilot training, experience and “human performance aspects.”

— The jet’s cabin floor was punctured from below in two places by “aircraft structure.”

— Of the 133 passengers and five crew members aboard Flight 624 from Toronto, 25 were injured in the crash.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/key-findings-on-air-canada-crash-in-halifax/feed/0The problem with sealed cockpitshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/germanwings-and-the-problem-with-sealed-cockpits/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/germanwings-and-the-problem-with-sealed-cockpits/#commentsThu, 26 Mar 2015 19:46:51 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=698651Speculation on the crash has focused on co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, but the real culprit may prove to be our myopic obsession with airline security

Everything went as it should for the first 20 minutes of the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf on Tuesday. That is, until the captain told his colleague, Andreas Lubitz, to take the controls while he stepped outside to use the washroom. When he tried to re-enter the locked cockpit, he quickly realized something was amiss: not only was Lubitz not responding, but the plane had begun a steep, controlled descent.

The next several minutes would have been nothing short of terrifying for the 144 passengers. Based on information gleaned from the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, French officials say the captain knocked on the door ever more loudly—eventually sounding as though he were trying to force his way in. Passengers, meanwhile, could be heard screaming in the final moments before the Airbus A320 slammed into the French Alps, killing all 150 on-board. Brice Robin, the chief Marseille prosecutor handling the investigation, called the act deliberate—the co-pilot can apparently being heard breathing on the recording—saying he intended to “destroy the aircraft.”

Speculation about the tragedy has not surprisingly swung to focus on Lubitz’s background, which so far hasn’t revealed much other than his relative inexperience (the 28-year-old had been flying for the Lufthansa subsidiary for a little over a year). But the real culprit may well prove to be a myopic global obsession with airline security—specifically the need to terrorist-proof airplane cabins by treating pilots as though they were New York taxi drivers.

In the wake of the devastating 9/11 attacks, airlines around the world were required to install heavy, armoured cockpit doors that would prevent the flight deck from being rushed by attackers. The doors themselves are supposed to be durable enough to survive a grenade blast, and the locking mechanism is designed to be controlled from the inside. When a crew member exits to use the washroom—not uncommon during longer flights—he or she must page the pilot at the controls to reopen the door (some planes are equipped with cameras and video screen to show who is standing outside). On Airbus planes, crew members outside the locked cockpit door have the ability to enter via a keypad code during emergencies, but entry can always be overridden by the pilot at the controls—effectively giving him or her the final say on who gets access.

A person moves the switch of the cockpit door locking system inside a flight simulator of an Airbus A320 in Vienna. (Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)

The sealed cockpit system makes sense when it comes to securing planes against hijackers and other terrorists, but it’s far from clear whether passengers are any safer as a result. If the Germanwings crash turns out to be a pilot suicide, as some are speculating, it wouldn’t be the first example of a pilot using the door-locking system for a purpose other than it was intended. In November 2013, a Mozambique Air flight crashed in Namibia, killing 33. The black box recordings later suggested one of the two pilots had been locked out after going to the washroom. A 1999 Air Egypt crash in Massachusetts that killed 217 followed a similar sequence of events, although investigators never formally deemed it suicide. One of the theories behind the 1997 SilkAir crash in Indonesia, which killed 104, involved a pilot locked out of the cockpit.

Mishaps involving locked cockpit doors are also common. Earlier this year, a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas declared an in-air emergency after a jammed cockpit door left the pilot locked out of the flight deck. The plane landed safely and nobody was hurt. Another emergency occurred in 2o11 on a All Nippon Airways flight from Okinawa to Tokyo when a the co-pilot mistakenly grabbed the wrong knob while trying to unlock the cockpit door. The plane went into a deep roll that resulted in injuries to two flight attendants.

There may even be threats when the system is working exactly the way it was designed. Sunjoo Advani, the head of an international air safety group that focuses on pilot training, says locked cockpit doors are inherently a bad idea because they seal off tired pilots in dark flight decks, degrading their situational awareness and ability to react to emergencies. In other words, they get tired and bored and easily startled—all elements that have been fingered in a growing number of so-called “loss of control” accidents. That’s the industry term for confused, disoriented pilots who inexplicably turn minor mid-air emergencies into catastrophic ones. The 2009 loss of Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic, which killed 228, is one example. The recent crash of Air Asia Flight 8501 into the Java Sea, where 162 perished, is shaping up to be another. All in all, loss-of-control accidents are believe to be responsible for some 1,500 deaths over the past decade, making it by far the most deadly category of airline accidents. “For a pilot to perform properly, they can’t just be locked in a room,” Advani says. “They need social interaction.”

The industry response to the Germanwings crash, once its final cause is determined, is unlikely to deliver the relief Advani is seeking. If changes are made, it will most likely involve tweaking rules about pilot bathroom breaks or implementing new safety equipment. Israel’s security-focused El Al, for example, is said to use a double-door system that seals off the forward washroom from the rest of the cabin, providing an extra layer of security for pilots and, potentially, making it easier for them to move between the washroom and cockpit without exposing themselves to an outside threat. (An El Al representative declined to comment when contacted by Maclean’s.)

If history is any guide, however, spending billions to reconfigure thousands of airplanes with similar double-door systems will only solve one problem and create another. Worse, it risks putting further distance between overly sequestered pilots and the very passengers they’re trying to protect.

PARIS — The co-pilot of the Germanwings jet barricaded himself in the cockpit and “intentionally” rammed the plane full speed into the French Alps, ignoring the captain’s frantic pounding on the cockpit door and the screams of terror from passengers, a prosecutor said Thursday.

In a split second, he killed all 150 people aboard the plane.

Andreas Lubitz’s “intention (was) to destroy this plane,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said, laying out the horrifying conclusions French investigators reached after listening to the last minutes of Tuesday’s Flight 9525 from the plane’s black box voice data recorder.

The Airbus A320 was flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf when it lost radio contact with air traffic controllers and began dropping from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. The prosecutor said Lubitz wordlessly set the plane on an 8-minute descent into the craggy French mountainside that pulverized the plane.

He said the German co-pilot’s responses, initially courteous in the first part of the trip, became “curt” when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing.

Robin said the pilot, who has not been identified, left the cockpit when the plane reached cruising altitude, presumably to go to the lavatory. Then the 28-year-old co-pilot took control of the jet as requested.

“When he was alone, the co-pilot manipulated the buttons of the flight monitoring system to initiate the aircraft’s descent,” Robin said.

The pilot knocked several times “without response,” the prosecutor said, adding that the cockpit door could only be blocked manually from the inside.

The co-pilot said nothing from the moment the captain left, Robin said: “It was absolute silence in the cockpit.”

The A320 is designed with safeguards to allow emergency entry into the cockpit if a pilot inside is unresponsive. The override code known to the crew does not go into effect, however — and indeed goes into a lockdown — if the person inside the cockpit specifically denies entry.

During the flight’s final minutes, pounding could be heard on the cockpit door as the plane’s instrument alarms sounded but the co-pilot’s breathing was calm and that of a fully conscious man, Robin said.

“You don’t get the impression that there was any particular panic, because the breathing is always the same. The breathing is not panting. It’s a classic, human breathing,” Brice said.

No distress call ever went out from the cockpit, and the control tower’s pleas for a response went unanswered.

Air traffic control cleared the area to allow the plane to make an emergency landing if needed, and asked other planes to try to make contact. The French air force scrambled a fighter jet to try to head off the crash.

Just before the plane hit the mountain, passengers’ cries of terror could be heard on the voice recorder.

“The victims realized just at the last moment,” Robin said. “We can hear them screaming.”

Airlines in Europe are not required to have two people in the cockpit at all times, unlike the standard U.S. operating procedure after the 9-11 attacks changed to require a flight attendant to take the spot of a briefly departing pilot.

Neither Robin nor Lufthansa indicated there was anything the pilot could have done to avoid the crash, saying he had acted appropriately.

Robin said Lubitz had never been flagged as a terrorist and would not give details on his religion or his ethnic background. German authorities were taking charge of the investigation into him.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said the airline was already “appalled” by what happened in its low-cost subsidiary.

“I could not have imagined that becoming even worse,” Spohr said in Cologne. “We choose our cockpit staff very, very carefully.”

Lubitz had joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly out of flight school, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said the airline had no indication why he would have crashed the plane. He said pilots undergo yearly medical examination but that doesn’t include psychological tests.

Lufthansa’s chief said Lubitz started his training in 2008 and there was a “several-month” gap in his training six years ago. Spohr said he couldn’t say what the reason for that was but after the break “he not only passed all medical tests but also his flight training, all flying tests and checks.”

Robin avoided describing the crash as a suicide.

“Usually, when someone commits suicide, he is alone,” he said. “When you are responsible for 150 people at the back, I don’t necessarily call that a suicide.”

In the German town of Montabaur, acquaintances told The Associated Press that Lubitz appeared normal and happy when they saw him last fall as he renewed his glider pilot’s license.

“He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well,” said a member of the glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched Lubitz learn to fly. “He gave off a good feeling.”

Lubitz had obtained his glider pilot’s license as a teenager, and was accepted as a Lufthansa pilot trainee after finishing a tough German college preparatory school, Ruecker said. He described Lubitz as “rather quiet” but friendly.

Lubitz’s Facebook page, deleted sometime in the past two days, showed a smiling man in a dark brown jacket posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The Facebook page was restored after the French prosecutor’s press conference.

Robin said the Germanwings plane’s second black box still had not been found but remains of the victims were being collected and DNA identification had begun.

In the Alpine hamlet of Le Vernet, French authorities set up a viewing tent for family members on Thursday to look toward the site of the crash, which lies on a steep, treacherous site only reachable by a long hike.

Robin said Lubitz’s family was in France but was being kept separate from the other victims’ families. The victims’ families were briefed ahead of the press conference.

“The victims deserve explanations from the prosecutor,” Robin said. “(But) they are having a hard time believing it.”

The principal of Joseph Koenig High School in Haltern, Germany, Ulrich Wessel, which lost 16 students and two teachers in the crash, said the state governor had called him Thursday afternoon to tell him about the probe’s conclusion.

“It is much, much worse than we had thought,” Wessel said. “It doesn’t make the number of dead any worse, but if it had been a technical defect then measures could have been taken so that it would never happen again.”

The circumstances of the crash are likely to revive questions about the possibility of suicidal pilots and the wisdom of sealing off the cockpit.

“From the moment it became apparent that the Germanwings flight had made a controlled descent for 8 minutes with no ‘Mayday,’ one feared that either pilot suicide or hijack was the cause,” said Philip Baum, London-based editor of trade magazine Aviation Security International.

“The kneejerk reaction to the events of 9-11 with the ill-thought reinforced cockpit door has had catastrophic consequences,” he added.

Beer’s friend was one of 16 students and two teachers from the main high school in the western German town of Haltern who were killed aboard the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf that crashed Tuesday in France. A total of 67 Germans, many Spaniards, as well as people from Australia, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Denmark and the Netherlands are believed to be among the 150 who died.

The crash has hit Haltern hard. In the rural town amid fields about 80 kilometres northeast of Duesseldorf, it seems everyone knew someone who died aboard the aircraft.

“We are a town of 38,000,” Mayor Bodo Klimpel said on ARD television, adding that his son attends the same school as the students who died. “It’s only natural that you know some people personally.”

Classes were cancelled Wednesday but students were encouraged to come to the Joseph Koenig High School in any event, to be with classmates and talk with psychologists and other counsellors.

Police had erected a line outside the building to keep dozens of reporters and cameras away from the children as they hugged and wept at a makeshift memorial of candles and flowers at the entrance to the building.

“We’re here to help on a difficult day so that the people here in Haltern have the chance to mourn,” police spokeswoman Inge Such said.

A hand-painted sign leaned on an outdoor pingpong table read in white letters: “Yesterday we were many; today we are alone,” with 16 white crosses painted underneath the message.

Beer was one of a group that came from a neighbouring school to be with the Joseph Koenig students to try to come to grips with what had happened.

“We’re all talking with each other; the atmosphere is indescribable,” she said. “You just can’t believe that your own friend is gone.”

In the above combination of photos taken from video, a TransAsia Airways plane banks sharply, then clips a road and a vehicle before careening into a shallow river in Taipei, Taiwan, after takeoff Wednesday. The dramatic footage aired by Taiwanese television station TVBS came from an employee’s car dashboard camera. The driver and passenger in the taxi struck by the wing were injured, and rescuers were searching in the water and the plane fuselage for people missing in the crash.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Rescuers used a crane to hoist a wrecked TransAsia Airways plane from a shallow river in Taiwan’s capital late Wednesday as they searched into the night for 18 people missing in a crash that killed at least 25 others.

Flight 235 with 58 people aboard — most of them travellers from China — banked sharply on its side shortly after takeoff from Taipei, clipped a highway bridge and then careened into the Keelung River.

Rescuers in rubber rafts pulled 15 people from the wreckage during daylight. After dark, they brought in the crane, and the death toll was expected to rise once crews were able to search through previously submerged portions of the fuselage, which came to rest a few dozen meters (yards) from the shore.

Dramatic video clips apparently taken from cars were posted online and aired by broadcasters, showing the ATR 72 propjet as it pivoted onto its side while zooming toward a traffic bridge over the river. In one of them, the plane rapidly fills the frame as its now-vertical wing scrapes over the road, hitting a vehicle before heading into the river.

Speculation cited in local media said the pilot may have turned sharply to follow the line of the river to avoid crashing into a high-rise residential area, but Taiwan’s aviation authority said it had no evidence of that.

Taiwanese broadcasters repeatedly played a recording of the plane’s final contact with the control tower in which the pilot called out “Mayday” three times. The recording offered no direct clues as to why the plane was in distress.

It was the airline’s second French-Italian-built ATR 72 to crash in the past year. Wednesday’s flight had taken off at 11:53 a.m. from Taipei’s downtown Sungshan Airport en route to the outlying Taiwanese-controlled Kinmen islands. The pilot issued the mayday call shortly after takeoff, Taiwanese civil aviation authorities said.

TransAsia director Peter Chen said contact with the plane was lost four minutes after takeoff. He said weather conditions were suitable for flying and the cause of the accident was unknown.

“Actually this aircraft in the accident was the newest model. It hadn’t been used for even a year,” he told a news conference.

Thirty-one passengers were from China, Taiwan’s tourism bureau said. Kinmen’s airport is a common link between Taipei and China’s Fujian province.

Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration said 23 people were confirmed dead, 15 were rescued with injuries and 20 were still missing.

Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was co-ordinating the rescue, said the missing people were either still in the fuselage or had perhaps been pulled down the river.

“At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu told reporters at the scene. “Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives.”

Rescuers could be seen pulling luggage from an open plane door to clear the fuselage. Ten inflatable dinghies also searched for the missing.

As a drizzle fell around nightfall, military crews took portable bridges to the scene, where rescue workers were building docks for easier access to the wreckage. About 300 rescue personnel and members of the media stood along the banks of the narrow river.

Part of the freeway above it was littered with debris and was closed after the crash.

Relatives of the victims had not reached the scene by dusk Wednesday but some were expected to arrive Thursday, including some flying from Beijing.

The plane’s wing hit a taxi on the freeway, and the driver and a passenger were injured, Chen said.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence said it had sent 165 people and eight boats to the riverside rescue scene, joining fire department rescue crews.

Another ATR 72 operated by the same Taipei-based airline crashed in the outlying Taiwan-controlled islands of Penghu last July 23, killing 48 at the end of a typhoon for reasons that are still under investigation.

ATR, a French-Italian consortium based in Toulouse, France, said it was sending a team to Taiwan to help in the investigation.

The ATR 72-600 that crashed Wednesday is manufacturer’s best plane model, and the pilot had 4,900 hours of flying experience, said Lin Chih-ming of the Civil Aeronautics Administration.

Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at Flightglobal magazine in Singapore, said the ATR 72-600 is the latest iteration of one of the most popular turboprop planes in the world, particularly favoured for regional short-hop flights in Asia.

It has a generally good reputation for safety and reliability and is known among airlines for being cheap and efficient to operate.

While it’s too early to say what caused the crash, engine trouble or weight shifting were unlikely to be causes, Waldron said. Other possible factors include pilot error, weather or freak incidents such as bird strikes.

“It’s too early now to speculate on whether it was an issue with the aircraft or crew,” Waldron said.

The accessibility of the crash site should allow for a swift investigation, and an initial report should be available within about a month, Waldron said.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/rescuers-hoist-crashed-taiwanese-plane-from-river-to-search-for-missing/feed/1Cause of Antarctic plane crash that killed 3 Canadians a mysteryhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/investigators-cant-find-cause-of-antarctic-plane-crash-that-killed-3-canadians/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/investigators-cant-find-cause-of-antarctic-plane-crash-that-killed-3-canadians/#commentsFri, 20 Jun 2014 17:30:00 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=572109The men died in January 2013 when their Twin Otter crashed into the side of a mountain

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/investigators-cant-find-cause-of-antarctic-plane-crash-that-killed-3-canadians/feed/0Chinese girl fatally struck after Asiana plane crash was hit by 2 separate fire truckshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/chinese-girl-fatally-struck-after-asiana-plane-crash-was-hit-by-2-separate-fire-trucks/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/chinese-girl-fatally-struck-after-asiana-plane-crash-was-hit-by-2-separate-fire-trucks/#commentsThu, 12 Dec 2013 02:50:32 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=448201WASHINGTON – A teenage girl who survived the crash of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco only to be fatally struck by a fire truck on the runway was…

]]>WASHINGTON – A teenage girl who survived the crash of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco only to be fatally struck by a fire truck on the runway was actually run over by two rescue vehicles in the accident’s chaotic aftermath, according to documents released Wednesday at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing.

Authorities in California confirmed months ago that 16-year-old Chinese student Ye Meng Yuan was alive on the runway and covered in firefighting foam when she was hit by an emergency vehicle and suffered the multiple blunt injuries that killed her.

But an NTSB accident summary and firefighter interviews made public Wednesday disclosed for the first time that the girl was struck twice as she lay motionless near the airplane’s left wing. She was hit once by a fire rig spraying foam and again less than 11 minutes later by a second truck that was being turned around to fetch more water.

“Shortly thereafter, the victim (no longer covered due to the displacement of foam by the vehicle tires) was pointed out to the fire attack chief,” the summary states. “He reported the victim over the radio and had the body covered with a blanket.”

Firefighter interviews show that crew members from the first truck had spotted Yuan on the ground, thought she was dead and took steps to avoid her body before the truck accidentally rolled over her while manoeuvring closer to the plane.

Roger Phillips, a firefighter assigned to the airport, told NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration investigators that he saw a young female lying in a fetal position who appeared to be dead with a waxy face, rolled-back eyes and wearing an expression that “looked like a grimace.”

The body looked like a mannequin used in CPR training, Phillips said, and he did not check the victim for vital signs, but reported the body to a lieutenant on the scene and to the truck’s driver. The lieutenant, concerned about the passengers still trapped in the wrecked plane, responded, “Yes, yes, OK, OK. We’ve gotta get a line inside.”

In her interview, Lt. Christine Emmons said she saw the small body covered with dirt, made a “3 second” visual assessment and thought, “that’s our first casualty.” Even though she considered the downed person to be “DOA,” Emmons told investigators she wanted to make sure the body was not run over.

The driver of the second vehicle that hit Yuan reported not seeing anyone on the ground, but the drivers of at least two other trucks said they saw a body and took care to avoid it. One driver, Firefighter Nicholas Bazarini, told investigators he thinks he “definitely would have hit the body because he did not see it at all” and only avoided striking Yuan because a chief on the ground opened his door and warned him, “There is a body on the ground, you can’t go this way.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/chinese-girl-fatally-struck-after-asiana-plane-crash-was-hit-by-2-separate-fire-trucks/feed/0Pilot who crash-landed at San Francisco airport was ill-preparedhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/pilot-who-crash-landed-at-san-francisco-airport-was-ill-prepared/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/pilot-who-crash-landed-at-san-francisco-airport-was-ill-prepared/#commentsThu, 12 Dec 2013 02:48:53 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=448198WASHINGTON – The pilot of the jet that crash-landed at San Francisco’s airport last summer worried privately before takeoff about handling the Boeing 777, especially because runway construction meant he…

]]>WASHINGTON – The pilot of the jet that crash-landed at San Francisco’s airport last summer worried privately before takeoff about handling the Boeing 777, especially because runway construction meant he would have to land without any help from a common type of guidance system.

And neither the trainee nor an instructor pilot in the cockpit said anything when the first officer raised concerns four times about the plane’s rapid descent.

After the July 6 accident, which killed three people and injured more than 200, Lee Kang Kuk told National Transportation Safety Board investigators that he had been concerned he might “fail his flight and would be embarrassed.”

Lee’s backstory emerged Wednesday in documents released at an NTSB hearing called to answer lingering questions about the crash of Asiana Flight 214.

Though Lee was an experienced pilot with the Korea-based airline, he was a trainee captain in the 777, with less than 45 hours in the jet. He had not piloted an airliner into San Francisco’s notoriously tricky airport since 2004, according to NTSB investigator Bill English.

So far, the investigation has not found any mechanical problems with the 777 prior to impact, although testing is ongoing, English said.

That focused attention on Lee, who did not speak at the hearing but whose actions — and failure to act — were a major part of the daylong meeting.

The NTSB’s chairman, Deborah Hersman, stressed that the agency has not yet concluded what caused the crash. But she acknowledged that the agency was examining signs of confusion about the 777’s elaborate computer systems and an apparent lack of communication in the cockpit.

Documents released Wednesday cataloged a series of problems that, taken together, could have been factors in the crash.

The 46-year-old pilot told investigators he had been “very concerned” about attempting a visual approach without instrument landing aids, which were turned off. A visual approach involves lining the jet up for landing by looking through the windshield and using numerous other cues, rather than relying on a radio-based system called a glide-slope that guides aircraft to the runway.

Lee said the fact that he would be doing a visual approach in a jet as big as a 777 particularly troubled him.

But he didn’t speak up because others had been safely landing at San Francisco under the same conditions. As a result, he told investigators, “he could not say he could not do the visual approach.”

Another Asiana pilot who recently flew with Lee told investigators that he was not sure if the trainee captain was making normal progress and that he did not perform well during a trip two days before the accident. That captain described Lee as “not well organized or prepared,” according to the investigative report.

“This pilot should never have taken off,” said attorney Ilyas Akbari, whose firm represents 14 of the passengers. “The fact that the pilot was stressed and nervous is a testament to the inadequate training he received, and those responsible for his training and for certifying his competency bear some of the culpability.”

There were other indications that a culture of not acknowledging weakness — and of deferring to a higher-ranking colleague — contributed to the crash.

Lee told NTSB investigators that he did not immediately move to abort the landing and perform a “go around” as the plane came in too low and too slow because he felt that only the instructor pilot had the authority to initiate that emergency move.

A reluctance of junior officers to speak up has been an issue in past accidents, though industry training has tried to emphasize that safety should come first.

The case will probably force foreign airlines to examine their cockpit culture, said Tom Anthony, director of the aviation safety program at the University of Southern California.

The U.S. went through that process decades ago and shook off a “captain-as-overlord” culture, he said, and now some Asian airlines will have to make sure their training encourages even junior pilots to speak up.

Asiana representatives at the hearing did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.

Lee insisted in interviews that he had been blinded during a critical instant before the botched landing by a piercing light from outside the aircraft. NTSB investigators repeatedly asked about the light, but he was unable to pinpoint its origin or how it precisely affected him.

Asked whether he wore sunglasses in the cockpit, Lee said he did not “because it would have been considered impolite to wear them when he was flying with his” instructor. The instructor pilot told investigators he never saw a bright light outside the aircraft.

Recordings from the cockpit show Lee took the controls about 1,500 feet above San Francisco Bay.

The plane’s first officer, Bong Don Won, told NTSB investigators that as the plane started its descent, he noticed its “sink rate” was too rapid. He said that he said nothing at that point, but as the plane’s altitude dropped below 1,000 feet, he advised the crew four times about the rapid descent. The cockpit recorder showed no response from the others, though the first officer said the pilot deployed the plane’s flaps, which appeared to slow the descent.

The crew did not comment again on the jet’s low approach until it reached 200 feet above the ground, according to a transcript of the plane’s cockpit voice recording.

Lee conceded to investigators that he was worried about his unfamiliarity with the 777’s autoflight systems. He admitted he had not studied the systems well and thought the plane’s autothrottle was supposed to prevent the jet from flying below minimum speed as it drew near the runway.

NTSB investigators also raised concerns about a safety certification issue involving the design of the 777’s controls, warning that the plane’s protection against stalling does not always automatically engage.

When the plane’s autothrottle is placed in a “hold” mode, as it was during the Asiana flight, it is supposed to re-engage or “wake up” when the plane slows to its minimum airspeed.

Boeing’s chief of flight deck engineering, Bob Myers, testified that the company designed the automated system to aid — not replace — the pilot. If there’s a surprise, he said, “we expect them to back off on the automation” and rely on their basic skills.

Boeing evacuation engineer Bruce Wallace testified that at least one, if not two, of the passengers who died did not have seat belts on.

Wallace also said inflatable rafts deployed inside the jet, pinning at least one flight attendant in the wreckage. Engineers had never seen that happen before and were looking at safety improvements.

One of the three fatalities was a teenage girl from China who survived the crash but become covered in firefighting foam and got hit by an emergency vehicle on the runway.

Documents released Wednesday revealed that Ye Meng Yuan was struck twice — once by a fire rig spraying foam and again 11 minutes later by a second truck that was turning around to fetch water.

___

Follow Martha Mendoza at https://twitter.com/mendozamartha .

___

Mendoza reported from San Jose, Calif. Associated Press Airlines Writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/pilot-who-crash-landed-at-san-francisco-airport-was-ill-prepared/feed/0Former Microsoft exec, son killed when plane crashed into Conn. homeshttp://www.macleans.ca/general/former-microsoft-exec-son-died-when-plane-crashed-into-conn-homes/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/former-microsoft-exec-son-died-when-plane-crashed-into-conn-homes/#commentsSun, 11 Aug 2013 01:00:05 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=412398(Fred Beckham/AP Photo)
HARTFORD, Conn. – The plane accident that killed four people in a Connecticut neighbourhood was not the first crash for the pilot, a former Microsoft executive who…

HARTFORD, Conn. – The plane accident that killed four people in a Connecticut neighbourhood was not the first crash for the pilot, a former Microsoft executive who was taking his teenage son on a tour of East Coast colleges.

The pilot, Bill Henningsgaard, was killed along with his son, Maxwell, and two children who were in a house struck by the small propeller-driven plane on Friday. Four bodies were recovered from the wreckage and sent to the Connecticut medical examiner’s office for identification.

East Haven police on Saturday released the names of the crash victims, including Henningsgaard, 54, of Medina, Wash.; his 17-year-old son; 13-year-old Sade Brantley and 1-year-old Madisyn Mitchell, who lived in the East Haven home hit by the plane.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Patrick Murray said Saturday the plane was upside down when it struck a house at about a 60 degree angle. He said the pilot was making his first approach to the airport and did not declare an emergency before the crash.

After removing the wreckage and before analyzing any data, he said at a news conference in New Haven, “We don’t have any indication there was anything wrong with the plane.”

A preliminary NTSB report on the crash is expected within 10 business days. A more in-depth report could take up to nine months.

Henningsgaard, a highly regarded philanthropist, was flying a small plane to Seattle in 2009 with his mother when the engine quit. He crash-landed on Washington’s Columbia River.

“I forced myself to confront that fact that the situation any pilot fears — a mid-air emergency, was happening right then, with my mother in the plane,” he wrote in a blog post days later.

In the Connecticut crash, Henningsgaard was bringing the 10-seater plane, a Rockwell International Turbo Commander 690B, in for a landing at Tweed New Haven Airport in rainy weather just before noon when the plane struck two small homes, engulfing them in flames. The aircraft’s left wing lodged in one house and its right wing in the other.

As the children’s mother yelled for help from the front lawn, several people in the working-class neighbourhood raced to rescue the children, but they were forced to turn back by the fire.

A neighbour, David Esposito, was among those who raced to help the children’s mother. He said he ran into the upstairs of the house, where the woman believed her children were, but he couldn’t find them after frantically searching a crib and closets. He returned downstairs to search some more, but he dragged the woman out when the flames became too strong.

The pilot’s family had learned it was Bill Henningsgaard’s plane through the tail number, said his brother, Blair Henninsgaard, the city attorney in Astoria, Ore.

In 2009, Bill Henningsgaard was flying from Astoria, Ore. with his 84-year-old mother to watch his daughter in a high school play when he crashed into the river as he tried to glide back to the airport. He and his mother, a former Astoria mayor, climbed out on a wing and were rescued.

Henningsgaard was a member of Seattle-based Social Venture Partners, a foundation that helps build up communities. The foundation extended its condolences to his wife and two daughters.

“There are hundreds of people that have a story about Bill — when he went the extra mile, when he knew just the right thing to say, how he would never give up. He was truly all-in for this community, heart, mind and soul,” the foundation wrote Friday in a post on its website.

Paul Shoemaker of Social Venture Partners told the Seattle Times that Henningsgaard was “an incredibly good, real, honest man, for the community, for his family, for this world.”

“The guy has already done so much for the world. And he was going to do so much more,” he said.

Henningsgaard spent 14 years at Microsoft in various marketing and sales positions, according to his biography on Social Venture Partners website. He was a longtime board member at Youth Eastside Services, a Bellevue, Wash.-based agency that provides counselling and substance-abuse treatment, and led the organization’s $10.7 million fundraising campaign for its new headquarters, which opened in 2008.

A vigil for the victims of the crash was planned for Saturday night in an East Haven park.

___

Associated Press writers Steven DuBois in Portland, Ore., Gene Johnson in Seattle and John Christoffersen in East Haven, Conn., contributed to this report.

]]>RICHMOND, B.C. – The Transportation Safety Board says a series of misfortunes and pilot errors, including the failure to properly secure an engine oil cap, caused the crash of a small plane outside Vancouver’s airport in October 2011.

The board’s Bill Yearwood says the engine’s manufacturer issued a bulletin in 1995 about the oil cap, but that issue alone didn’t cause the plane to crash.

Instead, the unsecured oil cap forced the pilot to return to Vancouver and a chain of other problems combined to cause the crash.

The Northern Thunderbird King Air 100 aircraft with nine people aboard crashed and burst into flames on a busy road just before the airport’s runway, injuring the passengers and killing the two pilots.

Yearwood says the pilots could have survived the crash if not for the fire and he noted Transport Canada has failed to implement recommendations from the safety board to reduce post-crash fires.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/tsb-report-says-chain-of-events-led-to-deadly-crash-outside-vancouvers-airport/feed/0Slow approach speed, aborted landing attempt part of probe into Asiana crash at San Franciscohttp://www.macleans.ca/general/slow-approach-speed-aborted-landing-attempt-part-of-probe-into-asiana-crash-at-san-francisco/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/slow-approach-speed-aborted-landing-attempt-part-of-probe-into-asiana-crash-at-san-francisco/#commentsMon, 08 Jul 2013 13:54:49 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=402825SAN FRANCISCO – Investigators have determined that Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was travelling “significantly below” the target speed during its approach and that the crew tried to abort the landing…

]]>SAN FRANCISCO – Investigators have determined that Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was travelling “significantly below” the target speed during its approach and that the crew tried to abort the landing just before it smashed onto the runway. What they don’t yet know is whether the pilot’s inexperience with the type of aircraft and at San Francisco’s airport played a role.

A day after the jetliner crash landed in San Francisco, killing two people and sending more than 180 to hospitals, officials said Sunday that the probe was also focusing on whether the airport or plane’s equipment also could have malfunctioned.

The South Korea government announced Monday that officials will inspect engines and landing equipment on all Boeing 777 planes owned by Asiana and Korean Air, the national carrier.

Also Sunday, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said he was investigating whether one of the two teenage passengers killed actually survived the crash but was run over by a rescue vehicle rushing to aid victims fleeing the burning aircraft. Remarkably, 305 of 307 passengers and crew survived the crash and more than a third didn’t even require hospitalization. Only a small number were critically injured.

Investigators said that the weather was unusually fair for foggy San Francisco. The winds were mild, too. During the descent, with their throttles set to idle, the pilots never discussed having any problems with the plane or its positioning until it was too late.

Seven seconds before the Boeing 777 struck down, a member of the flight crew made a call to increase the jet’s lagging speed, National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman said at a briefing based on the plane’s cockpit and flight data recorders. Three seconds later came a warning that the plane was about to stall.

Two-and-a-half seconds later, the crew attempted to abort the landing and go back up for another try. The air traffic controller guiding the plane heard the crash that followed almost instantly, Hersman said.

While investigators from both the U.S. and South Korea are in the early stages of an investigation that will include a weekslong examination of the wreckage and alcohol tests for the crew, the news confirmed what survivors and other witnesses had reported: a slow-moving airliner flying low to the ground.

“We are not talking about a few knots” difference between the aircraft’s target landing speed of 137 knots, or 157 mph (250 kph), and how fast it was going as it came in for a landing, Hersman said.

Pilots normally try to land at the target speed, in this case 137 knots, plus an additional 5 more knots, said Bob Coffman, an American Airlines captain who has flown 777s. He said the briefing raises an important question: “Why was the plane going so slow?”

The airline said Monday in Seoul that the pilot at the controls had little experience flying that type of plane and was landing one for the first time at that airport.

Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said that Lee Gang-guk, who was at the controls, had nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes but only 43 in the 777, a plane she said he still was getting used to flying. Another pilot on the flight, Lee Jeong-min, had about 12,390 hours of flying experience, including 3,220 hours on the 777, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in South Korea. Lee was the deputy pilot, tasked with helping Lee Gang-guk get accustomed to the 777, according to Asiana Airlines.

Two other pilots were aboard, with teams of rotating at the controls.

The plane’s Pratt & Whitney engines were on idle and the pilots were flying under visual flight rules, Hersman said. Under visual flight procedures in the Boeing 777, a wide-body jet, the autopilot would typically have been turned off while the automatic throttle, which regulates speed, would been on until the plane had descended to 500 feet (150 metres) in altitude, Coffman said. At that point, pilots would normally check their airspeed before switching off the autothrottle to continue a “hand fly” approach, he said.

There was no indication in the discussions between the pilots and the air traffic controllers that there were problems with the aircraft.

Survivors and rescuers said it was nothing less than astonishing that nearly everyone survived after a frightful scene of fire burning inside the fuselage, pieces of the aircraft scattered across the runway and people fleeing for their lives.

In the first comments on the crash by a crew member, cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye said that seconds before impact she felt that something was wrong.

“Right before touchdown, I felt like the plane was trying to take off. I was thinking ‘what’s happening?’ and then I felt a bang,” Lee told reporters Sunday night in San Francisco. “That bang felt harder than a normal landing. It was a very big shock. Afterward, there was another shock and the plane swayed to the right and to the left.”

She said that during the evacuation, two inflatable slides that were supposed to inflate toward the outside instead inflated toward the inside of the plane, hurting two Asiana flight attendants. Pilots came to rescue the flight attendants but even after getting injured, she said that the crew did not leave the plane until after the passengers evacuated. She said she was the last one to go.

South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said the 291 passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 Americans, three Canadians, three Indians, one Japanese, one Vietnamese and one person from France.

The two dead passengers have been identified as students from China —16 and 17 years old — who were scheduled to attend summer camp in California with dozens of classmates. Hospital officials said Sunday that two of the people who remained hospitalized in critical condition were paralyzed with spinal injuries, while another two showed “road rash” injuries consistent with being dragged.

Foucrault, the coroner, said one of the bodies was found on the tarmac near where the plane’s tail broke off when it slammed into the runway. The other was found on the left side of the plane about 30 feet (10 metres) away from where the jetliner came to rest after it skidded down the runway. Foucrault said an autopsy he expects to be completed by Monday will involve determining whether the second girl’s death was caused by injuries suffered in the crash or “a secondary incident.”

He said he did not get a close enough look at the victims on Saturday to know whether they had external injuries.

The flight originated in Shanghai, China, and stopped over in Seoul, South Korea, before making the nearly 11-hour trip to San Francisco.

On audio recordings from the air traffic tower, controllers told all pilots in other planes to stay put after the crash. “All runways are closed. Airport is closed. San Francisco tower,” said one controller.

At one point, the pilot of a United Airlines plane radioed.

“We see people … that need immediate attention,” the pilot said. “They are alive and walking around.”

“Think you said people are just walking outside the airplane right now?” the controller replied.

“Yes,” answered the pilot of United Flight 885. “Some people, it looks like, are struggling.”

When the plane hit the ground, oxygen masks dropped down, said Xu Da, a product manager at an Internet company in Hangzhou, China, who was sitting with his wife and teenage son near the back of the plane. He stood up and saw sparking — perhaps from exposed electrical wires — and a gaping hole through the back of the plane where its galley was torn away along with the tail.

Xu and his family escaped through the opening. Once on the tarmac, they watched the plane catch fire, and firefighters hose it down.

In the chaotic moments after the landing, when baggage was tumbling from the overhead bins onto passengers and people all around her were screaming, Wen Zhang grabbed her 4-year-old son, who hit the seat in front of him and broke his leg.

Spotting a hole at the back of the jumbo jet where the bathroom had been, she carried her boy to safety.

“I had no time to be scared,” she said.

Nearby, people who escaped were dousing themselves with water from the bay, possibly to cool burn injuries, authorities said.

By the time the flames were out, much of the top of the fuselage had burned away. The tail section was gone, with pieces of it scattered across the beginning of the runway. One engine was gone, and the other was no longer on the wing.

]]>SAN FRANCISCO – Pilots of Asiana Flight 214 were flying too slowly as they approached San Francisco airport, triggering a warning that the jetliner could stall, and they tried to abort the landing but crashed barely a second later, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday. The airline said the pilot at the controls had little experience flying that type of plane.

While federal investigators began piecing together what led to the crash, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault disclosed that he was looking into the possibility that one of the two teenage passengers who died Saturday actually survived the crash but was run over by a rescue vehicle rushing to aid victims as the plane burst into flames. Remarkably, 305 of 307 passengers survived the crash and more than a third didn’t even require hospitalization. Only a small number were critically injured.

Accident investigators are trying to determine whether pilot error, mechanical problems or something else was to blame for the crash. At a news conference, NTSB chief Deborah Hersman disclosed the Boeing 777 was travelling at speeds well below the target landing speed of 137 knots per hour, or 157 mph.

“We’re not talking about a few knots,” she said.

Hersman described the frantic final seconds of the flight as the pilots struggled to avoid crashing.

Seven seconds before the crash, pilots recognized the need to increase speed, she said, basing her comments on an evaluation of the cockpit voice and flight data recorders that contain hundreds of different types of information on what happened to the plane. Three seconds later, the aircraft’s stick shaker — a piece of safety equipment that warns pilots of an impending stall — went off. The normal response to a stall warning is to boost speed and Hersman said the throttles were fired and the engines appeared to respond normally.

At 1.5 seconds before impact, there was a call from the crew to abort the landing.

The details confirmed what survivors and other witnesses said they saw: an aircraft that seemed to be flying too slowly just before its tail apparently clipped a seawall at the end of the runway and the nose slammed down.

Pilots normally try to land at the target speed, in this case 137 knots, plus an additional five more knots, said Bob Coffman, an American Airlines captain who has flown 777s. He said the briefing raises an important question: “Why was the plane going so slow?”

The plane’s Pratt & Whitney engines were on idle and the pilots were flying under visual flight rules, Hersman said. Under visual flight procedures in the Boeing 777, a wide-body jet, the autopilot would typically have been turned off while the automatic throttle, which regulates speed, would been on until the plane had descended to 500 feet in altitude, Coffman said. At that point, pilots would normally check their airspeed before switching off the autothrottle to continue a “hand fly” approach, he said.

There was no indication in the discussions between the pilots and the air traffic controllers that there were problems with the aircraft.

The airline said Monday in Seoul that the pilot at the controls had little experience flying that type of plane and was landing one for the first time at that airport.

Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said that Lee Gang-guk was trying to get used to the 777 during Saturday’s crash landing. She says the pilot had nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes but had only 43 hours on the 777.

Among the questions investigators are trying to answer was what, if any, role the deactivation of a ground-based landing guidance system due to airport construction played in the crash. Such systems help pilots land, especially at airports like San Francisco where fog can make landing challenging. The conditions Saturday were nearly perfect, with sunny skies and light winds.

The flight originated in Shanghai, China, stopped over in Seoul, South Korea, before making the nearly 11-hour trip to San Francisco. The South Korea-based airline said four South Korean pilots were on board, three of whom were described as “skilled.”

Among the travellers were citizens of China, South Korean, the United States, Canada, India, Japan, Vietnam and France. There were at least 70 Chinese students and teachers heading to summer camps, according to Chinese authorities.

Fei Xiong, a Chinese passenger , was travelling to California so she could take her 8-year-old son to Disneyland. The pair was sitting in the back half of the plane. Xiong said her son sensed something was wrong.

When the plane hit the ground, oxygen masks dropped down, said Xu Da, a product manager at an Internet company in Hangzhou, China, who was sitting with his wife and teenage son near the back of the plane. When he stood up, he said he could see sparking — perhaps from exposed electrical wires.

He turned and could see the tail where the galley was torn away, leaving a gaping hole through which they could see the runway. Once on the tarmac, they watched the plane catch fire, and firefighters hose it down.

“I just feel lucky,” said Xu, whose family suffered some cuts and have neck and back pain.

In the chaotic moments after the landing, when baggage was tumbling from the overhead bins onto passengers and people all around her were screaming, Wen Zhang grabbed her 4-year-old son, who hit the seat in front of him and broke his leg.

Spotting a hole at the back of the jumbo jet where the bathroom had been, she carried her boy to safety.

“I had no time to be scared,” she said.

Authorities immediately closed the airport and rescuers rushed to the scene. A United Airlines pilot radioed the control tower, saying: “We see people … that need immediate attention. They are alive and walking around.”

“Think you said people are just walking outside the airplane right now?” the controller replied.

“Yes,” answered the pilot of United Flight 885. “Some people, it looks like, are struggling.”

At the crash scene, police officers knives up to crew members inside the burning wreckage so they could cut away passengers’ seat belts. Passengers jumped down emergency slides, escaping from billowing smoke that rose high above the bay. Some passengers who escaped doused themselves with water from the bay, presumably to cool burns, authorities said.

By the time the flames were out, much of the top of the fuselage had burned away. The tail section was gone, with pieces of it scattered across the beginning of the runway.

Foucrault, the coroner, said senior San Francisco Fire Department officials notified him and his staff at the crash site on Saturday that one of the 16-year-olds who was killed may have been struck on the runaway. Foucrault said an autopsy he expects to be completed by Monday will involve determining whether the girl’s death was caused by injuries suffered in the crash or “a secondary incident.”

He said he did not get a close enough look at the victims on Saturday to know whether they had external injuries.

Foucrault said one of the bodies was found on the tarmac near where the plane’s tail broke off when it slammed into the runway. The other was found on the left side of the plane about 30 feet away from where the jetliner came to rest after it skidded down the runway.

___

Lowy reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press writers Terry Collins, Terry Chea and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco, David Koenig in Dallas and Louise Watt in Beijing contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO – An Asiana Airlines flight packed with more than 300 people slammed onto the runway while landing at San Francisco airport Saturday and caught fire, forcing many to escape by sliding down the emergency inflatable slides and into a trail of metal debris as flames tore through the plane.

At least two people who were found outside the wreckage died in the crash, while another 182 people were taken to hospitals, many with minor injuries, authorities said. Forty-nine people were reported to be in critical condition, San Francisco International Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said.

Chinese state media said Sunday that the two dead passengers were Chinese schoolgirls.

Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, students at Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China, died in the crash, state broadcaster China Central Television said, citing a fax from the airline to the Jiangshan city government.

The South Korean airline said in a statement that Ye and Wang were both 16.

As the plane approached the runway from the waters of San Francisco Bay around noon, travellers in the terminals and others eyewitnesses could see that the aircraft was swaying unusually from side to side and that at one point the tail seemed to hit the ground before breaking off.

Kate Belding, who was jogging a few miles away, said she thought: “Oh my God. That plane is crashing.”

By the time the flames were out, much of the top of the Boeing 777’s fuselage had burned away. The tail section was gone, with pieces of it scattered across the beginning of the runway. One engine appeared to have broken away. Emergency responders could be seen walking inside the burned-out wreckage.

News of the crash spread quickly on Twitter and the Internet in this wired city, with eyewitnesses tweeting their stories, posting images of the plumes of smoke rising above the bay and uploading video of passengers fleeing the burning plane.

“It just looked really bad,” Belding said. “I’ve seen the pictures of it since then, and it’s amazing anyone walked out of that plane.”

The investigation has been turned over to the FBI and terrorism has been ruled out, San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said. Federal aviation and transportation investigators were heading to the scene. Asiana, Boeing and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, pledged to work with them.

Vedpal Singh, who was sitting in the middle of the aircraft and survived the crash with his family, said there was no forewarning from the pilot or any crew members before the plane touched down hard and he heard a loud sound.

“We knew something was horrible wrong,” said Singh, who suffered a fractured collarbone and had his arm was in a sling.

“It’s miraculous we survived,” he said.

A visibly shaken Singh said the plane went silent before people tried to get out anyway they could. His 15-year-old son said luggage tumbled from the overhead bins The entire incident lasted about 10 seconds.

Another passenger, Benjamin Levy, 39, said it looked to him that the plane was flying too low and too close to the bay as it approached the runway. Levy, who was sitting in an emergency exit row, said he felt the pilot try to lift the jet up before it crashed, and thinks the manoeuvr might have saved some lives.

“Everybody was screaming. I was trying to usher them out,” he recalled of the first seconds after the landing. “I said, ‘Stay calm, stop screaming, help each other out, don’t push.'”

Hayes-White said she did not know the ages or genders of the people who died, but said they were found on “the exterior” of the plane. She said the 307 passengers and crew members had been aboard had been accounted for following several hours of confusion during which authorities said they were unsure of the whereabouts of more than 60 people who, as it turned out, had been evacuated to a different area of the airport.

Based on witness accounts in the news and video of the wreckage, Mike Barr, a former military pilot and accident investigator who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California, said it appeared the plane approached the runway too low and something may have caught the runway lip — the seawall at the end of the runway.

San Francisco is one of several airports around the country that border bodies of water that have walls at the end of their runways to prevent planes that overrun a runway from ending up in the water.

Since the plane was about to land, its landing gear would have already been down, Barr said. It’s possible the landing gear or the tail of the plane hit the seawall, he said. If that happened, it would effectively slam the plane into the runway, he said.

Noting that some witnesses reported hearing the plane’s engines rev up just before the crash, Barr said that would be consistent with a pilot who realized at the last minute that the plane was too low and was increasing power to the engines to try to increase altitude. Barr said he could think of no reason why a plane would come in to land that low.

Belding was out jogging just before 11:30 a.m. on a path across the water from the airport when she noticed the plane approaching the runway in a way that “just didn’t look like it was coming in quite right.”

“Then all of a sudden I saw what looked like a cloud of dirt puffing up and then there was a big bang and it kind of looked like the plane maybe bounced (as it neared the ground),” she said. “I couldn’t really tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and (in) a weird angle.”

“Not like it was cartwheeling,” she said, but rather as though the wings were almost swaying from side to side.

The flight originated in Shanghai, China, and stopped over in Seoul, South Korea, before coming to San Francisco, airport officials said. The airline said there were 16 crew members aboard, and 291 passengers.

South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said the passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 61 Americans, three Canadians, three from India, one Japanese, one Vietnamese and one from France, while the nationalities of the remaining three haven’t been confirmed. It said 30 of the passengers were children.

“The Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco remains in close contact with local authorities and remains ready to provide consular assistance to any Canadian citizens among the affected passengers,” Canadian Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Emma Welford said in an email sunday.

Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said 49 people were in serious condition and 132 had less significant injuries.

The airport closed for several hours, and when it reopened, two of the four runways were operating.

Asiana is a South Korean airline, second in size to national carrier Korean Air. It has recently tried to expand its presence in the United States, and joined the Star Alliance, which is anchored in the U.S. by United Airlines.

The 777-200 is a long-range plane from Boeing. The twin-engine aircraft is one of the world’s most popular long-distance planes, often used for flights of 12 hours or more, from one continent to another. The airline’s website says its 777s can carry between 246 to 300 passengers.

The flight was 10 hours and 23 minutes, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. The 777 is a smaller, wide-body jet that can travel long distances without refuelling and is typically used for long flights over water.

The most notable accident involving a 777 occurred on Jan. 17, 2008 at Heathrow Airport in London. British Airways Flight 28 landed hard about 1,000 feet short of the runway and slid onto the start of the runway. The impact broke the 777-200’s landing gear. There were 47 injuries, but no fatalities.

An investigation revealed ice pellets that had formed in the fuel were clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger, blocking fuel from reaching the plane’s engines. The Rolls-Royce Trent 800 series engines that were used on the plane were then redesigned.

Bill Waldock, an expert on aviation accident investigation, said he was reminded of the Heathrow accident as he watched video of Saturday’s crash. “Of course, there is no indication directly that’s what happened here,” he said. “That’s what the investigation is going to have to find out.”

The Asiana 777 “was right at the landing phase and for whatever reason the landing went wrong,” said Waldock, director of the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University accident investigation laboratory in Prescott, Ariz.

“For whatever reason, they appeared to go low on approach and then the airplane pitched up suddenly to an extreme attitude, which could have been the pilots trying to keep it out of the ground,” he said.

The last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in 2001.

Asia remains one of the fastest-growing regions for aviation in the world. Even with slowing economies in Japan and China, airlines there saw 3.7 per cent more passengers than a year ago, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Finding enough experienced pilots to meet a growing number of flights is becoming a problem. A 2012 report by aircraft manufacturer Boeing said the industry would need 460,000 new commercial airline pilots in the next two decades — with 185,000 of them needed in Asia alone.

“The Asia-Pacific region continues to present the largest projected growth in pilot demand,” the report said.

___

Lowy reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press writers Jason Dearen and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco, Scott Mayerowitz in New York and Pauline Arrillaga in Phoenix contributed to this report.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/two-people-dead-182-hospitalized-after-plane-crash/feed/1Two dead in plane crash were found outside damaged jetlinerhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/asiana-airlines-flight-crashes-while-landing-at-san-francisco-airport/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/asiana-airlines-flight-crashes-while-landing-at-san-francisco-airport/#commentsSat, 06 Jul 2013 15:32:16 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=402644(Noah Berger/AP)
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco’s fire chief says the two people who died in the Asiana airlines crash were found outside of the heavily damaged jetliner.
Fire Chief…

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco’s fire chief says the two people who died in the Asiana airlines crash were found outside of the heavily damaged jetliner.

Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said late Saturday that she did not know the ages or genders of the victims.

Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul had more than 300 passengers and crew members aboard when it made a hard landing, lost a tail and caught on fire at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday morning.

More than 180 people were taken to nine area hospitals, but the majority had relatively minor injuries. As of Saturday evening the number of fatalities stood at two while at least five people were reported in critical condition.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Flight 214 from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing before noon PDT. A video clip posted to YouTube showed smoke coming from a jet on the tarmac. Passengers could be seen jumping down the emergency slides.

The top of the fuselage was burned away and the entire tail was gone. One engine appeared to have broken away. Pieces of the tail were strewn about the runway. Emergency responders could be seen walking inside the burned-out wreckage.

It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the plane as it was landing, but some eyewitnesses said the aircraft seemed to lose control and that the tail may have hit the ground.

Stephanie Turner saw the plane going down and the rescue slides deploy, but returned to her hotel room before seeing any passengers get off the jet, she told ABC News. She said when she first saw the flight she noticed right away that the angle of its approach seemed strange.

“I mean we were sure that we had just seen a lot of people die. It was awful,” she said. “And it looked like the plane had completely broken apart. There were flames and smoke just billowing.”

Kate Belding was out jogging just before 11:30 a.m. on a path across the water from the airport when she noticed the plane approaching the runway in a way that “just didn’t look like it was coming in quite right.”

“Then all of a sudden I saw what looked like a cloud of dirt puffing up and then there was a big bang and it kind of looked like the plane maybe bounced (as it neared the ground),” she said. “I couldn’t really tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and (in) a weird angle.”

“Not like it was cartwheeling,” she said, but rather as though the wings were almost swaying from side to side.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of investigators to San Francisco to probe the crash. NTSB spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Saturday that NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman would head the team.

Boeing said it was preparing to provide technical assistance to the NTSB. The maker of the plane’s engines, Pratt & Whitney, said it was co-operating with authorities investigating the crash.

Asiana is a South Korean airline, second in size to national carrier Korean Air. It has recently tried to expand its presence in the United States, and joined the Star Alliance, which is anchored in the U.S. by United Airlines.

The 777-200 is a long-range plane from Boeing. The twin-engine aircraft is one of the world’s most popular long-distance planes, often used for flights of 12 hours or more, from one continent to another. The airline’s website says its 777s can carry between 246 to 300 passengers.

The flight was 10 hours and 23 minutes, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. The 777 is a smaller, wide-body jet that can travel long distances without refuelling and is typically used for long flights over water.

The most notable accident involving a 777 occurred on Jan. 17, 2008 at Heathrow Airport in London. British Airways Flight 28 landed hard about 1,000 feet short of the runway and slid onto the start of the runway. The impact broke the 777-200’s landing gear. There were 47 injuries, but no fatalities.

An investigation revealed ice pellets that had formed in the fuel were clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger, blocking fuel from reaching the plane’s engines. The Rolls-Royce Trent 800 series engines that were used on the plane were then redesigned.

Bill Waldock, an expert on aviation accident investigation, said he was reminded of the Heathrow accident as he watched video of Saturday’s crash. “Of course, there is no indication directly that’s what happened here,” he said. “That’s what the investigation is going to have to find out.”

The Asiana 777 “was right at the landing phase and for whatever reason the landing went wrong,” said Waldock, director of the Embry-Riddle University accident investigation laboratory in Prescott, Ariz. “For whatever reason, they appeared to go low on approach and then the airplane pitched up suddenly to an extreme attitude, which could have been the pilots trying to keep it out of the ground.”

The last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in 2001.

Smaller airlines have had crashes since then. The last fatal U.S. crash was a Continental Express flight operated by Colgan Air, which crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y. on Feb. 12, 2009. The crash killed all 49 people on board and one man in a house.

Flying remains one of the safest forms of transportation: There are about two deaths worldwide for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data.

Just a decade ago, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when flying on an American plane. The risk of death was even greater during the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying — 133 out of every 100 million passengers — from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of terrorism.

Asia remains one of the fastest-growing regions for aviation in the world. Even with slowing economies in Japan and China, airlines there saw 3.7 per cent more passengers than a year ago, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Finding enough experienced pilots to meet a growing number of flights is becoming a problem. A 2012 report by aircraft manufacturer Boeing said the industry would need 460,000 new commercial airline pilots in the next two decades — with 185,000 of them needed in Asia alone.

“The Asia-Pacific region continues to present the largest projected growth in pilot demand,” the report said.

___

Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., Scott Mayerowitz in New York and Pauline Arrillaga in Phoenix contributed to this report.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/asiana-airlines-flight-crashes-while-landing-at-san-francisco-airport/feed/0Float-plane crash off B.C. coast claims the life of one: emergency officialhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/float-plane-crash-off-b-c-coast-claims-the-life-of-one-emergency-official/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/float-plane-crash-off-b-c-coast-claims-the-life-of-one-emergency-official/#commentsWed, 22 May 2013 03:12:35 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=386220VICTORIA – One person is dead following a float-plane crash off Vancouver Island.
A spokesman for the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria, B.C., says the crash took place off…

]]>VICTORIA – One person is dead following a float-plane crash off Vancouver Island.

A spokesman for the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria, B.C., says the crash took place off the west side of Stuart Island, which is located in the Strait of Georgia, northeast of Campbell River, B.C.

He says nobody has reporter hearing or seeing the crash, and the plane was found upside down by someone who came across the scene.

Rescue crews from the Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian Coast Guard have been on scene.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/float-plane-crash-off-b-c-coast-claims-the-life-of-one-emergency-official/feed/0Robert Murray Heathhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/robert-murray-heath/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/robert-murray-heath/#commentsWed, 13 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=347430He'd spent his life flying around the world—he even married his wife on a flight

Robert Murray Heath was born Nov. 7, 1957, in Mississauga, Ont. His father, Robert, was an engineer and his mother, Betty, was a telephone sales operator. Robert Sr. owned a hobby plane and Robert spent as much time as he could beside his dad in the cockpit, falling in love with planes.

Robbie to his parents and one older sister, Gail, “Bob” to most everyone else, he attended Mississauga’s Allan A. Martin Public School. When he was 12, he joined the Air Cadets, where he learned to fly gliders, then small planes, and earned his pilot’s licence. After graduating from Gordon Graydon Memorial Secondary School, he moved to Moncton, N.B., to do commercial and instructor flight training.

In 1985, Bob took a job with Sabourin Airways in the small community of Red Lake, in northwestern Ontario. He flew small planes—the Beechcraft 99 and Piper Navajo Chieftain—mostly to remote reservations and on hunting and fishing trips. On a medevac flight, he met Lucy Geno, a dark-haired nurse who worked at the Red Lake hospital. She was 10 years his elder, and he courted her with gifts of doughnuts and rabbit-trimmed hats. Lucy was the mother of three grown children when the couple met, and Bob soon became Papa to them all. The couple married on Nov. 17, 1990, in a Twin Otter flying at 5,280 feet—exactly one mile—above Red Lake. Lucy wore an embroidered red parka; Bob wore his flight suit.

Bob, who had a beard, sparkly eyes and a full belly laugh, was “mum’s soulmate,” says Helen Prest, Lucy’s daughter. With his quirky sense of humour, he was “always up to some sort of shenanigan,” says pilot Norm Wright.

In 1991, Bob found work in Inuvik, N.W.T., just north of the Arctic Circle. He piloted Twin Otter planes for Kenn Borek Air Ltd., serving remote Inuit communities and delivering what he called “mad scientists” to ice floes on polar-bear research expeditions. Lucy followed two years later. They settled into a burgundy townhouse, which quickly filled up with Bob’s books and collections of Aboriginal paintings and Inuit carvings. Bob soon became a legend in the Arctic flying community.

For the past 15 years, he’d leave the Arctic in the fall and fly a Twin Otter all the way to Antarctica, the bottom of the Earth, a four-day trip; he spent the Canadian winters there, delivering scientists to research stations and snapping photographs of the striking, barren landscape in his spare time. A man of insatiable curiosity, he never failed to ask what they were doing, why and how he could help, and collected patches from various countries’ research outposts to stitch to his leather aviator jacket. In the spring, he’d fly back to the Arctic, stopping off to see family in Winnipeg or Toronto, regaling them with tales of his latest exploits at the frozen ends of the Earth. (He was a talented, if long-winded, storyteller). When he wasn’t at either pole, Bob zig-zagged over the globe, ferrying planes to Asia or South America for Kenn Borek.

To Bob, “flying was an adventure,” says his son-in-law Joe Prest. “Flying in the Arctic on Monday,” Bob once wrote on a pilot message board. “Golfing in Scotland on Wednesday, and seeing the Pyramids two days later.” It was quite the life. Once, a woman gave birth in the back of a Navajo plane he was piloting. Bob loved teaching younger pilots and had a talent for foreign tongues. Fluent in Spanish and Italian, he spoke passable Ojibwa and Tagalog, a language spoken in the Philippines.

Still, every adventure took him home to Inuvik to Lucy, and Bob’s little bichon frisé, Sebastian, who waited atop his big leather chair. On the ground, Bob spent his days with his nose deep in a book or whipping up elaborate meals for his large family, which included six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He loved to eat and cook, especially shrimp, but Helen says he’d leave the kitchen “a right wreck.”

Last October, Bob took off for another season in Antarctica. On Jan. 23, he was flying a Twin Otter with two other crew members over the remote, jagged Queen Alexandra mountain range, en route to an Italian research station at Terra Nova Bay. They never made it. Two days later, rescue crews spotted the plane’s tail jutting from a steep, 3,900-m slope, embedded in snow and ice. They deemed the crash “not survivable.” Bob was 55.

]]>SANIKILUAQ, Nunavut – An initial report into the deadly crash of a passenger plane in Nunavut suggests the aircraft landed hard and ended up shooting past the end of the runway by as much as 200 metres.

The crash happened at the airport in Sanikiluaq last Saturday evening. Six-month-old Isaac Appaqaq was killed. The two pilots and six other passengers were all injured, but survived.

The Transport Canada occurrence report from the crash says the plane, a Fairchild twin-engine turbo prop en route from Winnipeg, was on its second approach that night.

“The aircraft touched down hard and a runway overrun ensued,” reads the report, posted online. “The aircraft came to a stop approximately 150 to 200 metres past the end of the intended runway surface.”

The report notes that the information is preliminary and subject to change as the investigation continues.

The Transportation Safety Board has said there was some blowing snow at the time of the crash, but hasn’t said whether it played a role. The Transport Canada report doesn’t mention anything about the weather conditions.

Nunavut’s coroner, Padma Suramala, has told media in the North that the child suffered head injuries when he was thrown from his mother’s lap on impact.

Airlines recommend children be held on the shoulder rather than on the lap during landings, but Suramala said she didn’t think that would have made any difference in this crash.

Sanikiluaq is a community of 800 located on the Belcher Islands in the southeastern corner of Hudson Bay. As in all Nunavut communities, flying is the only way in and out.

The flight was chartered for Keewatin Air, which schedules three trips a week between Winnipeg and Sanikiluaq. The aircraft belonged to Winnipeg-based Perimeter Aviation.

Some of the passengers on board were in Winnipeg for medical appointments and were on their way home.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/early-report-suggests-plane-in-deadly-nunavut-crash-landed-hard-overran-runway/feed/0Two dead, several seriously hurt in dual plane crashes in Manitoba and Albertahttp://www.macleans.ca/general/two-dead-several-seriously-hurt-in-dual-plane-crashes-in-manitoba-and-alberta/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/two-dead-several-seriously-hurt-in-dual-plane-crashes-in-manitoba-and-alberta/#commentsMon, 19 Nov 2012 02:08:07 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=316139SNOW LAKE, Man. – Rescue crews on snowmobiles had to beat a path through thick bush in northern Manitoba on Sunday to reach the survivors of one of two fatal…

]]>SNOW LAKE, Man. – Rescue crews on snowmobiles had to beat a path through thick bush in northern Manitoba on Sunday to reach the survivors of one of two fatal plane crashes which took place on the Prairies over the weekend.

Low cloud cover meant a rescue helicopter was unable to reach seven people who were injured after a plane enroute to Winnipeg from Snow Lake, Man., went down just after 10 a.m. local time on Sunday.

The crash which killed one person came after a separate aircraft went down in northern Alberta on Saturday evening, killing the 52-year-old pilot, who was the plane’s sole occupant.

In Sunday’s incident, authorities said a Cessna 208 Caravan went down in a remote area about 10 kilometres from the town of Snow Lake, Man., which is some 700 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

Police said the pilot, a 40-year-old man from Snow Lake, was killed and that seven others were injured, some seriously.

RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Line Karpish said a passenger on the plane used a cellphone to call 911 and alert authorities about the crash.

A Canadian Forces Hercules helicopter was dispatched and rescuers on board had parachutes they could use to reach the survivors, but Karpish said crews weren’t able to jump because the cloud ceiling was so low.

That meant the RCMP, volunteer firefighters, wildlife officers and other locals had to use snowmobiles to reach the scene.

“Just to get to the plane crash, basically it took over an hour and a half to cover the six miles,” said Karpish, adding that the area is covered in thick bush.

“I’m told that they ended up having to push a trail. They did end up accessing (the site) using snowmobiles and rescue sleighs to get to them safety.”

The injured were brought to a small health centre in Snow Lake, but poor visibility at the time meant that medevac flights that would have carried them to larger hospitals couldn’t land.

Clarence Fisher, the mayor of Snow Lake, said Sunday afternoon that while the sky appeared to be clearing, fast-approaching darkness would have likely made it difficult for planes to land.

A decision was made to transport the injured by ground ambulance to Flin Flon, The Pas, or Thompson, which were all between two and three hours away.

“We have a local hospital here but people with serious injuries would need to be medevaced out,” Fisher said.

There’s been no word on the conditions of the injured.

Snow Lake, a mining community with gold, zinc and copper deposits in the vicinity, has a population of just over 800.

Karpish said many people in the community chipped in to help with the rescue.

“In the north, it’s not unusual when something happens like this, it hits home very closely,” Karpish said. “At the end of the day everybody just joins in and helps out and gets these people to safety.”

Meanwhile, authorities said in Saturday’s crash in nothern Alberta, the single-engine turboprop entered an area between La Crete and High Level where visibility was reduced to less that 100 metres due to low cloud cover and heavy fog.

RCMP said an emergency beacon was detected by the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Trenton, Ont., which notified police.

Authorities found the plane a few kilometres northeast of the La Crete airport, about 670 kilometres north of Edmonton.

The Transportation Safety Board will be investigating both crashes.

Board spokesman Chris Krepski said that the plane that crashed near Snow Lake went down not long after taking off from the community. Investigators were on their way to the community and he said more information wouldn’t be available until Monday.

Fisher said the plane was operated by a local charter company, Gogal Air Service. He said he wasn’t able to provide any details about who was on board.

]]>More than two years after Air France Flight 447 fell out of the sky over the Atlantic, French investigators have determined that a lack of pilot training played a key role in the harrowing nighttime crash that killed all 228 aboard.

This week the French BEA authority released its final report into the accident, which occurred on June 1, 2009 as Flight 447 was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The 224-page document concluded that the plane plunged into the ocean after a series of events led the crew to stall the plane near its cruising altitude and “the lack of any actions that would have made recovery possible.”

The long-awaited report confirmed what many in the industry had suspected: the current training regime for pilots is insufficient for dealing with so-called “loss of control” incidents that result from aerodynamic stalls, which are caused when a plane’s wings lose lift—usually because the plane is flying too slowly or trying to climb too steeply.

Needless to say, such accidents aren’t supposed to happen. Stall prevention and recovery is part of a pilot’s basic training. In general, the rule is to point the nose of the aircraft down and increase thrust until the plane’s airspeed is sufficient to restore lift to the wings. However, a Maclean’s investigation last year found that many pilots faced with a fatal mid-air stall not only failed to respond properly, but often appeared to do the exact opposite of what they were supposed to. The Maclean’s investigation also revealed that a combination of factors may be responsible for the seemingly unthinkable behaviour, ranging from the way pilots are trained in flight simulators to the increasing complexity and automation of today’s modern jetliners.

In the case of Air France, the sequence of events that led to the crash began when the plane flew through a band of thunderstorms. The pilots slowed the aircraft in anticipation of turbulence and then suddenly lost their airspeed indicators after the plane’s external sensors, called pitot tubes, failed—likely because they had become clogged with ice. But while the loss of accurate airspeed readings presented the pilots with a mid-air crisis, it should not have been fatal. French accident investigators found that the Air France pilots responded to the emergency in a disorganized fashion and unwittingly put the plane into a stall after the autopilot clicked off, as it was designed to do in the absence of accurate airspeed readings. More importantly, the co-pilot who was at the controls when the plane went down (the captain had left the cockpit on a rest break, only to return in the final minutes before the crash) repeatedly tried to point the plane’s nose upward despite the fact that the plane’s stall warning system kept sounding, albeit intermittently. The aircraft might have been saved had he done the exact opposite.

Among other things, French investigators recommended key changes to how pilots are trained to recognize and respond to stalls, including improved training when it comes to flying an aircraft manually at high altitude. The report also suggested changes to the design of some of the Airbus’s cockpit safety systems to make it easier for pilots to recognize when they’ve entered a stall. That includes the addition of an angle-of-attack indicator that shows the angle of the wing relative to the air flowing around it. “Only a direct readout of the angle of attack could enable crews to rapidly identify the aerodynamic situation of the aeroplane and take the actions that may be required,” the report said.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/air-france-flight-447-lack-of-training-led-to-crash-report-finds/feed/19Three feared dead after weekend’s second deadly plane crashhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/three-feared-dead-after-weekends-second-deadly-plane-crash/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/three-feared-dead-after-weekends-second-deadly-plane-crash/#commentsMon, 14 May 2012 14:10:21 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=258422Three people are thought to have died after a small plane crashed in the B.C. interior Sunday, the second deadly plane crash in the West in a single weekend.
From…

The plane, a privately owned aircraft, left Pitt Meadows earlier in the day with five people on-board, but began its return flight with three. Late Sunday night, officers at Victoria’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre had yet to confirm any deaths.

Horrified motorists on the Okanagan Connector highway phoned 911 after they saw the single-engine de Havilland Beaver crash into the trees around 6:45 p.m. about 30 metres from the side of the highway near the closed Brenda Mine.

“When I came around the corner and saw the plane in the air, I thought, ‘Whoa! That’s low, by the tree line,’ and then it just disappeared,” said eyewitness Chris Koebel.

The crash came just a day after two small planes collided in the air above Saskatchewan, killing five people in all, including an 11-year-old boy.

]]>A plane crash near the Russian city of Yaroslavl carrying the local professional hockey team has left 44 people dead, including teammates of former Vancouver Canuck Pavol Demitra. According to local authorities, the plan lilted left as it took off from the Yaroslavl airport, crashing just 500 metres away. An official told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency that only one person survived the plane crash. The incident led to the cessation of the KHL’s first regular season hockey game of the year partway through the first period. League president Alexander Medvedev said “the players of both teams considered playing after their friends and colleagues died to be absolutely impossible.” The team’s roster consists of several former NHL players and league prospects. Former Calgary Flame Brad McCrimmon, who won the Stanley Cup with the Flames in 1989 and the team’s coach, was among those killed.

]]>Seventy-eight people have been killed and 3 severely wounded, in a Moroccan military aircraft crash Tuesday, the BBC reports. The plane took off from Dakhla in the Western Sahara, and was on its way to Kinitra in Northern Morocco, when a local resident says a thick fog caused it to crash into a mountain. The plane was attempting to make a scheduled stop at a military base when it went down. Forty-two bodies have been found so far, while a search party persists for the others.